Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)Fourth time through! The date is set to the date I read the final word "the".(Read twice before and a third time selected passages.)This is my favorite book of all time. Admittedly it is challenging, but what it does is simply unique in all of literature, beautiful, silly, inexhaustible and, perhaps, exhausting.I don't want to say that you should read this book, unless it calls to you. It is not for every one. Let me give of some hints. This is a book that can overwhelm you unless you read it slowly and patiently, too rich in overlapping symbols to digest in large pieces. And yes this is really true even for really sophisticated readers. Even (hah!) if you breezed through Ulysses.If you've read this far, you may actually decide to read this book. So first of all courage!Tip! Definitely recommend reading alongside commentary, as this is often considered the most opaque "novel" ever written. I used Campbell and Robinson's Skeleton Key and Tindall's Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake. The best study of Wake is Joyce's Book of the Dark. The Bishop book on the Wake is good, but it is a thematic overview. It does the best presentation of the dreamer/aspect of the book. (I tend to agree that whether or not you agree the dream is real, at no point in the book is it supposed to represent normal waking consciousness.) It tends to do an excellent job of the connections of the sleeper-consciousness to the Book of the Dead and to the Viconan ideal history (language as a layered representation of the historical evolution of human consciousness.)John Gordon's plot summary is very speculative, and he tends to want to answer "what is really happening" as if the events are real, but it is a good book, and provides some very useful insights. There is a sense in which the surroundings of the dreamer show up in the dream, and he has a lot of source material on that.I still think the Campbell and Robinson's Skeleton Key is the best general guide.References: Joyce's Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Unlocking James Joyce's MasterworkFinnegans Wake: A Plot Summary (Irish StudiesTip! Definitely read the book aloud. I have done this with a lot of passages before and it seemed to help, but this time, I followed the discipline of reading the entire book aloud. this immeasurably enriches the experience.Also strongly recommend reading only a little--even just two or three pages--per day, but every day. I find 6 to 10 is the maximum I can manage--seriously. Aloud is best. And don't get discouraged, the first part you read will only begin to make sense after you are well into it--that is normal: the imagery is deliberately overdetermined as Joyce know you would miss much of it.In terms of "breaking through" Wake, it really takes some patience in that you may read a hundred pages or more before it starts to "kick in". This is because the book is composed in such a way that every part references every other part, including some that have not yet been read. Also it is truly deliberately a night book, with the level of consciousness descending and becoming more and more obscure towards the middle, and then renewing clarity towards the end; the sense is suggested in such passages by overlays of themes, and sound sense--it is effectively a different way of reading.A reading schedule really helps so that every day some of the images and rhythms start feeding into your brain. It is a very difficult book and nobody should worry about getting their egos bruised if they get stuck from time to time. In fact, despite the fact that I usually don't like to oversprinkle my reading with lots of reading of the critical literature, in the case of Wake it is absolutely essential to use a reader's guide. A warning though, there is a lot of the critical literature that makes cheap use of Joyce's polysemy, to crank out possibly connected but highly misleading interpretations.The good news is that Joyce has deliberately overdetermined his imagery, because he expects his reader to miss parts. Therefore, do not drive yourself crazy if you miss something--you will. But you will encounter echoes of anything Joyce considers important over and over again.The other tip I'd give is that despite the fact that the language has many many focii at once, there is always a focus or main subject or two where in any passage where all other references are subsidiary.I hasten to add that as seriously complex as the book is it is also seriously silly.Part II (The start of my adventure reading it the fourth time)Well OK, I am starting the second part of this review, as I have started re-reading this book again. Humorously, I think of it as an act of solidarity with one of my Goodreads friends who is currently bogged down in Ulysses. I do confess to being a bit of a Joyce nut, in that I have read Ulysses though 4 times, and Portrait 3. I picked up a copy when I got a new copy of Portrait, it said "take me take me" (although I am sure it was in some kind of pun language).Anyway, this edition is the one with the forward by John Bishop, which is an excellent introduction, as far as a few pages can prepare you. It also has the plot summaries in the table of contents. I don't remember the other edition, the red white and blue Viking paperback having the chapter titles (my enstuck Goodreads friend is complaining loudly that there are no titles in Ulysses.) With Wake, I am more than willing to baby myself, so every bit helps.I found that this time I was able to read the first chapter without getting completely confused without any outside help; I do admit, that is is part with which I am most familiar, so it maybe doesn't fully count.(I am now doing a slow read with a group, which I guess is my fifth time.)Part IIISo here is where I try to tell you what this book is about. The problem is that it isn't written in ordinary language, and so folks find themselves slipping into Joycean pun language to explain Finnegans Wake because it isn't about "one thing" exactly, and it is about everything, but, some things more than others. This makes a kind of sense, in that in a way, the Wake is the only full explanation of itself, but this is hardly helpful.I will try to avoid this for the most part and try to convey by suggestion and analogy. This is extremely difficult, because literary criticism or just talking about books in general is more or less done in the language that the books are written in, but this case, in which the thing is written in a highly mutated form of English, perhaps you could call it Jabberworkish, the problem is more like writing about music or painting, where the domains are very different.So I will tell it through my own eyes. In many cases I was influenced by other authors who have analyzed the book, they get full credit, I am just synthesizing my reaction.Finnegans Wake is about consciousness. Specifically, it is about all awakenings to full consciousness. A major philosophical source for Finnegans Wake is Vico. Most commentators, focus on Vico's concept of historical cycles, and certainly the book's structure has a basis in Vico's ages. But that interpretation is pretty trivial. (An actual exchange between Joyce and a critic. "Your puns are trivial" "No." said Joyce, "they are quadrivial".) What actually is of interest in Vico is he Viconian idea of the unconscious, what Vico called "ignorance", and how the primitive consciousness comes into awareness, and how the enlightenment of full consciousness is reflected in language! Bingo! In sleep, one is not fully cognizant of where one is, or who one is, so it is impossible to determine who is dreaming the Wake, or even if the dreamer is real. but it is definitely suggested that there is someone there. He appears to be a tavern keeper, possibly named Porter (which, as is inevitable in Wake, is a pun--on the drink) and in the dream language appears as Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, but he is more or less Here Comes Everybody, as his persona is infinitely elastic. Joyce had remarked that perhaps the dreamer is an old man, "although his existence is doubtful" and indeed the word world comes from the age of man (wer+eld), in reading it this time, as I am older, I tend to think of his dream as a retrospective dream interpretation of his life, and by extension life itself. As dreamer he lies insensate like Space itself, spread under a green patchwork quilt which is Ireland itself. Yet he is a restless sleeper. As a fat wheezy and somewhat inebriated old man, he likely physiologically suffering from sleep apnea and clearly, psychologically from guilt and fear of exposure. As Joyce puts it: "Lack breath must leap no more."His presence infects the initials of the language, as from time to time words start with H.C.E., E.C.H. etc.-- "how charmingly ecsquisite", as the Wake puts it. A large comic character, red nosed, fat, with a waist overcinched by his belt, and outsticking ears, farting and snoring, pompous and giving himself airs as a minor community leader, his dream mind is always falling into dissociative panics of disgrace and guilt, he is troubled by echoes of a possibly more romantic and handsome youth, and possibly a far more disreputable past. He fears toppling from his position, he has Scandinavian ancestry; he is Protestant, in a Catholic community; his wife, is, and his children are raised as Catholics. And if the community rises agains him--in the form of hsi customers, is he oppressor, or scapegoat? Will he fall? His name Humphrey is associated with, and dream morphed into that of Humpy Dumpty. The topping, fear of falling, like Ibsen's master builder reminds us of the book's central image of falling Tim Finnegan, of the comic Irish ballad--more on him in a minute.The other main characters of the book come from what appear to be his family.The other primary and most defined persona, is his female counterpart, Anna Livia Plurabelle, who, if real, though wife and mother, is in this altered world, the river Liffey, nicknamed by Dubliners, Anna Liffey, wending through and personifying the language itself. Flowing though the circulatory system of this dreamlike state, in the chapter that celebrates her alone, two gossipy crone washerwomen dish the dirt and slap the clothes forming the lubdub of her riparian circulation. (One of the greatest of all chapters in literature, it is filled to the brim with pun references to the rivers of the world.) Whereas H.C.E. is solid and inert, falls and rises, and in crashing splits, she is liquid and flows, dissolves and recirculates. Her initials, A.L.P., just like H.C.E's, also infect passages when her presence is being felt.She fell for him when she was a young girl (her initials are the same as Alice Pleasance Liddell, of Wonderland fame) and he was a handsome dashing piratical young man with a gleam in his eye, perhaps up to a a bit of "skandaknavery". She as his own literal life blood, water of life, has given the "key to her heart" to him, she has received a green dressinggown as a golden anniversary present, she is green mother nature, "leafy" and the continuous flow of everlasting Time.Now there are three children of H.C.E and A.L.P., the dueling brothers, Shem and Shaun, and the daughter, Issy.When H.C.E. seems himself as a younger man, he sees himself as a complete romantic hero, a Tristram to the young woman Isolde. However in reality, the patriarchal world order is one in which the male principle is, by its very drama of domination inherently unstable, so therefore incapable of the ideal inheritance, and Hump breaks apart in his Finnegan-fall into two polar opposites, represented by his sons.Where Shaun is pastor-Shem is sinner; where bourgeoisie--proletarian; where England--Ireland; God--Lucifer; food--drink; flesh--spirit (note how the two meanings of spirit combine); lawman--outlaw; master--slave; superego--id; worker--artist; ant--grasshopper; postman (delivers literature)--writer(delivers himself up to literature); sword--penbody--soul; lightness--darkness; space--time and so forth. They appear as Mute, and Jute; Burious and Cassious (butter and cheese: Brutus and Cassius); the Ondt and the Gracehopper; Mick (Archangel Michael) and Nick (Lucifer); the Mookse and the Gripes, to name a few of the aliases in which they manifest.H.C.E. projects the disowned part of himself onto Shem. He projects the view of himself as he wants to be seen onto Shaun. Shem is somewhat modeled on Joyce himself, but with an acid and ironical self-deprecation, that hides how essential Shem is to the whole kaboodle. For Shem is A.L.P.'s favorite, for the Book of Life, the letter that A.L.P. dictates herself, is accessible to Shem, the inspired artist-penman, where the stolid Shaun, postman and misdeliverer of the Word can only play second fiddle. Shaun in his postal rounds is merely a hollow booze barrel bobbing on the Liffey--the spirits (Shem) are missing.In addition to the two sons, there is Issy, the daughter. She is the selfregarding lookingglass girl, Maya/illusion, the Tempress, ever an Isolde, to the imagined Tristram usuuper; she is appearance. She is a continuity in multiplicity of A.L.P., unlike the sons who represent H.C.E's fundamental discontinuity. She is reflecting and quicksilver droplets to A.L.P.'s river, the rainbow girl, she is attended by the 7 girls of the rainbow colors and, multiplying by the 4 Viconian ages 4 X 7=28 + 1 = 29 she is the leap year girl, attended by the 28 other days. She is leaping, and dazzling, fickle and trickle: her splatter and splash represent the renewal and cycling back of the muddy mother river. "Catchmire stockings, libertyed garters, shoddyshoes, quicked out with selver. Pennyfair caps on pinnyfore frocks and a ring on her fomefang finger. And they leap so looply, looply as they link to light."Other recurrent characters include: The Four (the four Irish Analists, the four Godspell Writers Matthew, Mark Luke and John) they embody the Viconian Ages, and the Four Rivers of Paradise, The Four Points ogf the Compass, and in concrete form are the four posts of H.C.E.'s bed; The Twelve (Customers at Earwicker's pub, the members of the jury, for H.C.E. finds himself ever on trial); Kate the scrub woman, who is a crone manifestation of A.L.P., who is in charge of the digging up of old rubbish, she is Clio, or history, she also manifests as a hen digging in a rubbish heap, and finding the letter--the book of life--A.L.P.'s hen scratches; the Cad with the Pipe, a recurrent accuser manifesting H.C.E.'s guilty consciousness--for what?--there appears to be a peeping Tom incident of two women making water in Phoenix park?; and of course, Finnegan himself.Finnegan appears in an Irish comic ballad Finnegan's Wake (with an apostrophe). He works construction and falls to his death. At his wake, a riot ensues, someone splashes whiskey on him and he wakes up. "Bedad he revives, see how he rises, Timothy rising from the bed.Saying "Whittle your whiskey around like blazes, t'underin' Jaysus, do ye think I'm dead?"Finnegan is the Ur-Christ/Osirus/Odin figure, the dead and risen god of which humanity all too humanly partakes. Finnegans Wake is the wake of all dead Finnegans and the awakening of all Finnegans. His fall is accompanied by a hundred letter thunderword, the sound that startles the primitive to to worship and utterance in Vico's myth. The time of year of Finnegans Wake (if it has any season at all) is the Spring of renewal. (The Spring solstice fell on Joyce's lifepartner/wife Nora's birthday). The day is blustery, in the night, a bit of wind, a few showers and a patch of thunder. The tree branches keep knocking at the window. Tip. Tip is a term for a dump or rubbish heap, and also a clue. The hen is digging up the letter. Mother nature is calling. I leave the final words to Joyce. The keys to the heart of Nature herself. Sorrowful surrender and joyous embrace. The final passage of the book:(view spoiler)[So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me.tAll. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff!tSo soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Ustthen. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thous endsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the (hide spoiler)]
In What Is Art? Tolstoy unleashes criticism on all things artistic, sparing no one. His main argument is that art--whether literature, paintings, music, or drama--should be accessible to everyone. He says anything that the common man cannot understand or that does not represent the common man is actually a form of war on the common man. All art must teach; all art must be accessible; all art must tell the common man's story. Else, it is not art but an elitist manipulation--a dangerous one, at that. The main target of his anger is art that is enigmatic solely for the sake of being enigmatic. He even spends an entire chapter on Wagner to prove his point. While one could argue that this kind of critique is a signal of the Stalinist suppression of anything not "for the people," (the Bolsheviks actually praised Tolstoy and suppressed Dostoevsky) I do think that Tolstoy has a valid point--especially with regards to Joycean Modernism. I'll be honest, Modernism does annoy me. I understand the idea behind using style to comment on, well, style, but I really can't stand this pompous approach to art. It's boring and kind of defeats the point of publishing for the masses. This obviously does not apply to all Modernists; Hemingway and Fitzgerald are both very accessible. But Joyce is definitely an author who delights in name dropping and pretentious ramblings. Not my cup of tea.I had to read Finnegans Wake for a Modernist British literature class in undergrad and couldn't finish it. I suppose I'm a lesser English major for criticizing the inimitable James Joyce, but I found this novel pretentious and, frankly, stupid. As far as I can tell, there's no plot and really no characters. Every word in every sentence is a combination of three or more languages. This may sound interesting, but it's really painful to read and a ridiculous way to address linguistic issues. If you have something so profound to say, why the hell can't you make your writing accessible? Are you trying to keep it a secret? What is the point of combining 30+ languages to create linguistic garbage? I learned nothing from this novel other than language itself can be a kind of prison. I think D.H. Lawrence makes this argument much more powerfully in Lady Chatterly's Lover--anther Modernist novel, yes, but one whose acclaim does not exist just because the author was able to reference every piece of literature written before the Common Era.I guess I do understand the acclaim this novel receives: it references everything and Joyce DID have to be rather brilliant to know all of these languages. You can also see the coming of Post-Modernism here with Joyce's total disregard for anything (and I mean ANYTHING) traditional. Perhaps that is why I hated it. Moreover, going back to Tolstoy, I think there are political and biased reasons for this novel's godlike status. There are countless books that attempt to find Wake's meaning and many a floundering grad student struggling to grasp Joyce's points. The pretentiousness of this novel ensures there will never be a shortage of criticism about it, and, having the ability to make sense of nonsense allows one to appear cultured and genius-like. This does create a problem when you think about it. Only a few books out of the zillions that have been written are included in the canon, and mostly for their reinforcing our own racial, classist, gendered, and sexual prejudices. Finnegans Wake certainly fits this criteria by being accessible to only, say, 5 people on the planet. This isn't necessarily because of racism or sexism, but because of this idea that the best literature is NOT understood by the lowly masses. "They want John Grisham or Stephenie Meyer? Let them have Joyce!" is probably the best way to put it. All in all, I can't stand this book. If you want a good post-modern novel, read Kundera or Vonnegut. Finnegans Wake is waste of time (and brain power).
What do You think about Finnegans Wake (2002)?
The easiest book in the world... seriously. With scholars unable to ever reach consensus on what the book is or how it should be read or even if it actually has value, you can simply ignore them. Your opinions are just as valid. Add to this the wads of cultural ephemera that Joyce has packed the book with and you find yourself in the rare position to occasionally be BETTER qualified to interpret parts of the text than academics.Try this, get some friends together, pop the cork on a few bottles of wine and, in your most twee Irish accents read it to each other. A whole new world of dirty jokes, awful puns, barbed insults and musical references will suddenly pop out of this previously "impenetrable" text.And don't be afraid to get sidetracked, it's part of the point.
—Kelly McCubbin
Our Wake Reading Group, which is full of all sorts of helpful odds 'n sods: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/... Ay Hell[p]-full Qwroat from Jamesy "[A]nyone who reads the history of the three centuries that precede the coming of the English must have a strong stomach, because the internecine strife, and the conflicts with the Danes and the Norwegians, the black foreigners and the white foreigners, as they were called, follow each other so continuously and ferociously that they make this entire era a veritable slaughterhouse. The danes occupied all the principal ports on the east coast of the island and established a kingdom at Dublin, now the capital of Ireland, which has been a great city for about twenty centuries. Then the native kings killed each other off, taking well-earned rests from time to time in games of chess. finally, the bloody victory of the usurper Brian Boru over the nordic hordes on the sand dunes outside the walls of Dublin put an end to the Scandanavian raids. The Scandanavians, however, did not leave the country, but were gradually assimilated into the community, a fact that we must keep in mind if we want to understand the curious character of the modern Irishman….The mystic theologian who assumed the pseudonym of Dionysius, the pseudo-Areopagite, says somewhere, “God has disposed the limits of nations according to his angels”, and this probably is not a purely mystical concept. Do we not see that in Ireland the Danes, the Firbolgs, the Milesians from Spain, the Norman invaders, and the Anglo-Saxon settlers have united to form a new entity, one might say under the influence of a local deity? And, although the present race in Ireland is backward and inferior, it is worth taking into account the fact that it is the only race of the entire Celtic family that has not been willing to sell its birthright for a mess of pottage.’ (Critical Writings, 1966, p.159-66.)’ This is of much help too: http://www.ricorso.net/rx/library/aut...********** read (v.) Old English rædan (West Saxon), redan (Anglian) "to advise, counsel, persuade; discuss, deliberate; rule, guide; arrange, equip; forebode; explain" (related to ræd, red "advice"), from Proto-Germanic *redan (cognates: Old Norse raða, Old Frisian reda, Dutch raden, Old High German rattan, German raten "to advise, counsel, guess"), from PIE root *re(i)- "to reason, count" (cognates: Sanskrit radh - "to succeed, accomplish," Greek arithmos "number amount," Old Church Slavonic raditi "to take thought, attend to," Old Irish im-radim "to deliberate, consider"). Words from this root in most modern Germanic languages still mean "counsel, advise." Connected to riddle via notion of "interpret." Transference to "understand the meaning of written symbols" is unique to Old English and (perhaps under English influence) Old Norse raða. Most languages use a word rooted in the idea of "gather up" as their word for "read" (such as French lire, from Latin legere). One cannot, therefore, read passively. Nor can one read in isolation. It is a process. A doing. There are black marks on pulped wood. I am converting them, explaining them to myself, burrowing deep to dig up silt, rich in nutrients, sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet, sometimes Guinness-dark or sharp as the first sip of Whiskey on a teenage tongue. But always involving. Always evolving. We gather up scattered traces and, like Bibliomancers, we interpret, predict, tell our own fortune as well as that of the text. Joyce has refused to allow us the comfort of pretense, of our childish game of "story", lying curled in bed while images are scattered over us and we sleep. Instead, he asks us to work. He took 17 years to make something, it is no surprise we should be asked to spend a little more time on it than usual. write (v.) Old English writan "to score, outline, draw the figure of," later "to set down in writing" (class I strong verb; past tense wrat, past participle writen), from Proto-Germanic *writan "tear, scratch" (cognates: Old Frisian writa "to write," Old Saxon writan "to tear, scratch, write," Old Norse rita "write, scratch, outline," Old High German rizan "to write, scratch, tear," German reißen "to tear, pull, tug, sketch, draw, design"), outside connections doubtful."For men use to write an evill turne in marble stone, but a good turne in the dust." [More, 1513] Words for "write" in most Indo-European languages originally mean "carve, scratch, cut" (such as Latin scribere, Greek grapho, Sanskrit rikh-). To write is to do violence to something. It is not peaceful. It is not calm. It is not benign. He has scratched hard into the World, he has brought forth blood. It is not intended to be easy. It is not intended to be polite. **************You are sitting down. In front of you is a small rectangular object made of a substance derived from trees. You manipulate the object with your hands. You note that the object has been divided into a series of thin sheets. Each side of the sheet has been covered in small black marks. You focus your attention on these marks. You were taught as a child to associate these marks with certain vocalised signs known as words. Your optic muscles begin directing your eyes in a series of rapid horizontal movements. Photons, which have travelled for 8 minutes from the sun to reach you, are reflected back from the sheets and converted by a thin wall of flesh at the back of your eyes into a series of electro-chemical signals which travel deep into your brain, setting off a cascading fireworks display of activity. Though you were originally taught to associate certain shapes with certain letters of your culture's alphabet, you have been well trained to move far beyond that. Evolution has sacrificed certain areas of your brain which were once used to interpret the natural world around you to permit this ability. Once your visual cortex has deciphered the word (taking on average less than 150 milliseconds), ripples spread throughout the rest of your brain, investigating and developing its semantic meaning. Metaphors involving scent stimulate the olfactory sections of your brain, those involving taste fire off neurons last active when you ate your breakfast. The complexity of this process is astonishing to you, though it can only occur when it is ignored. But the text before you now is something different. It interrupts this process. It highlights, it illuminates what is ordinarily invisible. Your visual cortex is unable to rapidly and silently decipher the words. It requests assistance from other parts of your brain. It enters a dialogue, an investigation. It is forced to operate in ways it has not done since you were a child. The sensation is pleasurable. What was ready-to-hand has broken down. What was transparent has become deeply and richly coloured. It is beautiful to you. *********If you are still reading this, my last comment will simply be to stress how enjoyable the experience of working with this text was for me, how fun it was. There is music and laughter and brain-twisting and all the wonderful things that words are capable of. This text is, in my opinion, one of the greatest works of art ever created. It has a power and a depth and a beauty unmatched by any other work built out of words. There are as many ways to "read" it as there are Readers, and as many ways to respond to it too. For me, the main strands were political and personal - the colonial, the patriarchal, sex supressed and shameful, the family as mirror of the state and of the past - it is no coincidence that references to Irish Independence abound, particularly in the final section. What an amazing act of courage this book is. It has been about 15 years since I read his other books, so think 2015 will involve a chronological re-run through them all...
—Jonathan
Since this book is an anomaly unto itself, I will review it with a true story that I made up. There's a custodian in my apartment complex i've become friendly with named Red. One day, I noticed Red eyeing me up while I sat reading my copy of Finnegan's Wake and asked him if he was familiar with it. He replied "Yes" in his kindly old Red way, and launched into a breathless, half hour criticism of Joyce as a literary thief, "Picasso of letters" he called him, convincingly accusing him of cobbling his text together from bits and pieces of other writers' work. Astonished, I asked Red why he was a custodian and not teaching English Lit somewhere. "Because",he said,"I hate James Joyce...And I don't know how to read."
—Charlie
